Monday, June 19, 2006

That these two exchanges on TV were humorous, but for different reasons. First up is Murtha's idiotic exchange with Tim Russert on Sunday's Meet The Press. It was somewhat of a mix between Porky Pig and Grandpa Simpson. Here's the text, but if you've got to have the vid, here you go.

MR. RUSSERT: You say redeploy. Again, Mr. Rove challenges that comment. Let’s listen and give you again a chance to respond to the White House.

MR. ROVE: Congressman Murtha said, “Let’s redeploy them immediately to another country in the Middle East. Let’s get out of Iraq and go to another country.” My question is, what country would take us? What country would say after the United States cut and run from Iraq, what country in the Middle East would say, “Yeah. Paint a big target on our back and then you’ll cut and run on us.” What country would say that? What country would accept our troops?

MR. RUSSERT: What’s your response?

REP. MURTHA: There’s many countries understand the importance of stability in the Middle East. This is an international problem. We, we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. China’s the second largest user. All these countries understand you need stability for the energy supply that’s available in the Middle East. So there’s many, many countries.

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

REP. MURTHA: Kuwait’s one that will take us. Qatar, we already have bases in Qatar. So Bahrain. All those countries are willing to take the United States. Now, Saudi Arabia won’t because they wanted us out of there in the first place. So—and we don’t have to be right there. We can go to Okinawa. We, we don’t have—we can redeploy there almost instantly. So that’s not—that’s, that’s a fallacy. That, that’s just a statement to rial up people to support a failed policy wrapped in illusion.

MR. RUSSERT: But it’d be tough to have a timely response from Okinawa. REP. MURTHA: Well, it—you know, they—when I say Okinawa, I, I’m saying troops in Okinawa. When I say a timely response, you know, our fighters can fly from Okinawa very quickly. And—and—when they don’t know we’re coming. There’s no question about it. And, and where those airplanes won’t—came from I can’t tell you, but, but I’ll tell you one thing, it doesn’t take very long for them to get in with cruise missiles or with, with fighter aircraft or, or attack aircraft, it doesn’t take any time at all. So we, we have done—this one particular operation, to say that that couldn’t have done, done—it was done from the outside, for heaven’s sakes.

Jeff Goldstein at ProteinWisdom has this excellent post, pointing out the idiocy of Murtha's position (and asking for a little help in translating it to begin with).

Okinawa? Okinawa?

That’s, like, in Japan, isn’t it?

Which makes me wonder if, in speaking of quick strike troops redeployed outside of Iraq, Murtha isn’t overhyping to ability of the military just a bit. Or perhaps it’s just the laws of physics he’s overhyping. And he’s doing so, ironically, because the military is in his estimation unable to fight well enough when they are able to confront the enemy directly.

All of which seems rather bizarre to me.

Likewise, Murtha spends a lot of time noting that operations against Zarqawi (who, incidentally, he claims we “built up”—though Nick Berg’s head might tell a different tale) and other successful operations were performed “from the outside”—proof that we can pull troops from inside Iraq and still help the Iraqis control the country.

Of course, by “outside,” Murtha seems to mean something like, “from the air”—his argument being that because we bombed Zarqawi’s safe house from the sky rather than bumrushing it with ground troops, we can effectively fight the insurgency from bases outside the country without fear of the insurgents taking any strongholds.

I have and continue to have numerous disagreements with Sirota’s tone and positioning, but damned if he wasn’t dead on here. Too many liberals come on tv looking to make friends and get blown out of the water by cons. There are way too many Jeff Jarvis/Joe Lieberman liberals who think the most important thing is getting invited to the big party, when in fact they’re laughing at you behind your back.

It seems that what is most important to the progressives is not the substance or validity to your arguments, but that you're willing to alienate and demonize your opponent when making the argument.

And they wonder why they haven't achieved majority status in the Congress since 1994?